Theatre

There are only a few times in each person’s life where they get to experience something wholly unique and awe-inspiring. Last night was one of those times for me. My wife, Becky, and I went to the first preview performance of 2666 at the Goodman Theater. Adapted from the 900-page novel by Roberto Bolaño, the play is a five-hour epic. In fact, the scope of the show is so large that last night was the very first time the cast and crew had run the play all the way through. Quite frankly, I came into the theater not at all convinced that 2666 could even work as anything but a novel. Its size, density, and conscious lack of reliance on traditional dramatic structure make the novel a bear to read. The idea of breaking it down into a digestible form and then adapting it to the dialogue-driven medium of the stage seemed like madness. Somehow, the Goodman Theater pulled it off. I still cannot quite grasp how, but I have to recommend that everyone who is in Chicago and interested in theater as an artform goes to see it while they can.

2666 at the Goodman Theater is a once-in-a-lifetime theatrical experience.

For those who are unfamiliar, 2666 started as a novel by the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. Writing it consumed the last years of his life before he died of liver failure in 2003. It was published to rapturous acclaim in Spain in 2004 and received similar adulation upon its translated into English in 2008. The novel is divided into five separate parts, each of which is (mostly) set apart from the narrative of the others. The unifying element in all five sections is the fictional city of Santa Teresa on the border between Mexico and the United States. In Santa Teresa, just as in Ciudad Juarez, its real-life inspiration, the 1990’s see hundreds of women murdered, mutilated, and dumped in the desert outside town. These femicides are the horrifying lynchpin of 2666‘s disparate narrative threads and themes.

The international cover art for 2666.

It’s both the massive size and punishing themes of 2666 that made any attempt an adaptation so difficult. It’s a certainty that this production would not have happened without a stroke of luck. The Goodman was given a grant by Roy Cockrum, a former actor and monk (!) who won the Powerball. Mr. Cockrum decided to spend his windfall supporting ambitious, but commercially untenable artistic endeavors. That largess allowed the Goodman’s artistic director Robert Falls and playwright-in-residence Seth Bockley to spend months of rehearsal and untold millions mounting this quixotic production.

As mentioned, I attended the first preview performance. The planned performance was to take five hours and ten minutes, which included three 15-minute intermissions. The final run-time was closer to five hours and forty-five minutes. Incredibly, I never felt like the time was a hindrance to the performance. The time commitment was certainly massive, but the audaciousness and the quality of the work kept me glued to the action on stage.

Even more remarkable, I found that this stage production furthered my appreciation for 2666. It took me about a year to read the novel. It staggering length certainly played a role in that. It was hard to keep so many characters, plots, and themes straight in my head. As the difficulty of the text increased, I found reading 2666 to be a wearying experience. The impact was diluted when I finally did finish. By contrast, the necessary compression and simplification that an adaptation demands helped clarify Bolaño’s magnum opus for me. His punishing theme is that all money and power are bought by the brutality and exploitation experienced by the world’s most vulnerable. The killing of women in Santa Teresa is the inevitable result of our attempts at civilization.

The program image for the Goodman Theater’s production of 2666.

Act Four,”The Part About the Crimes,” makes this point with devastating clarity. Through the act, a naked woman’s body lies on the back of the stage, a constant reminder of the endless femicides that overwhelm Santa Teresa. Throughout, three nameless female narrators appear again and again to tell the audience of the names and circumstances of the victims. The police seem incapable of solving the crimes at best. At worst, they are actively complicit in the massive crime. Near the end of the act, a police officer has been told to drop his investigation into the femicides entirely. He calls his lover, the director of Santa Teresa’s asylum. She asks if the crime wave will ever end. “No. It will never stop.” He says this and then curls into a ball on the stage’s floor and lays his head on her body. It’s a moment of devastating resignation and despair. I have never seen anything quite like it on stage. I urge you to experience it if you can.

This week Unscripted Moments is covering Sketch Comedy with a brand new group on the Chicago scene – Adults! This is the first Sketch show that I’m covering and I am very excited to be able to expand to a new genre in live theater. When I went to view the show, this time I was able to sit in on more of a rehearsal process…and let me tell you, it was so much fun watching this crew work and collaborate together.

In this installment of Unscripted Moments, we get to sit down with director Tony Lifonti to talk about The James Downing Theater’s production of the Neil Simon comedy classic “Come Blow Your Horn”.[Read more…]

For this Segment of Unscripted Moments, we’re sitting down with Julia Rohed the director of The Bird Girl a brand new play. The show was written by resident playwright EJC Calvert, and is being put up by Mercy Street a new company in their first season here in Chicago.

A little about the show:

Living a life of solitude in a remote asylum, Amity’s world is shaken when she’s scooped up by an enterprising ringmaster and finds herself the centerpiece of a traveling freak show. …..The Bird Girl is a look at the intense pressure of public gaze, how it effects self-image and becomes a driving force in Amity’s life. The play was developed in workshop with Jon Robin Baitz at the New School for Drama in 2009, and had a reading with NYAC’s Casual Reading Series in August 2010.(Mercy Street Website)

For this segment of Unscripted Moments, we sat down with playwright Ray Nelson and director Alexander St. John to talk about the world premiere of the new play of Norma and the Maniac. The show is being produced by The Orchard, in association with Red Twist Theater’s guest company series.

Unscripted Moments is a continuing Addison Recorder series highlighting Chicago storefront theatre by Leigh Yenrick. Leigh is an actress who has worked in Toledo and the Twin Cities, and who currently resides in Chicago.

For this installment of Unscripted Moments, I sat down with Tosha Fowler, the Artistic Director of Cor Theater. We talked about their current production, A Map of Virtue, for which Fowler is also wearing the hat of director.

So, I got to see Louis C.K. do a stand-up show at the Chicago Theater last night. This was sort of a huge deal for me. In fact, my first impulse for this article was just to state that fact and then post Nyancat. I’ll try for more, though!

Since discovering his eponymous TV series nearly five years ago I have become an enormous fan of Louis C.K. His melancholy sense of humor, playful intelligence, dedication to not being a corporate jagoff, and disheveled style have been cornerstones of my pop culture identity. To wit, more than one friend has told me they’ve watched a particularly sad or embarrassing scene on Louie and felt bad for me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m so vocally a fan of his or because he’s had such a influence on me, but there we go. If the goatee fits I will wear it. [Read more…]

This week’s article is a little bittersweet to write, because it is about a production that is close to me. We are taking a look at Waltzing Mechanics’ seventeenth edition of EL Stories: The New Kids in Town. As a member of this particular production, I wanted to shine a light on the wonderfully talented cast and crew that I have had the pleasure to work and learn from.

To give a little history Waltzing Mechanics was founded in 2010 by Thomas Murray, Keely Leonard, and Zachary Florent. The Mechanics work “to create original documentary theatre inspired by real people telling stories about their lives. Using methods of performance ethnography, we facilitate dialogues among our audiences and within our communities.” EL Stories is part of that endeavor, and is exactly what it sounds like: stories about being on the EL Train and the other public transportation around Chicago.

For this interview I sat down with the director of this edition of EL Stories, Rebecca Willett, who provided some insight with her experience on this production. [Read more…]

A guest post for a continuing Addison Recorder series highlighting Chicago storefront theatre by Leigh Yenrick. Leigh is an actress who has worked in Toledo and the Twin Cities, and who currently resides in Chicago.

Tonight, we are highlighting the new kid on the block, Mozawa, opening their inaugural show Fallen at the Collaboraction Theater. I had the pleasure to go behind the scenes to get a sneak peak into the production, and to sit down with the Artistic Director Matthew Mozawa.

First, a little background on this production, an interdisciplinary theater adaptation based on the short story “In A Grove” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, and the film “Rashomon” by Akira Kurosawa. Adapted and directed by Mozawa’s Artistic Director Matthew Ozawa, this world premiere hybrid theater event features original score and live performance by Koto performer Yumi Kurosawa and Electronic Sound Artist Mike Vernusky.

A guest post – and first in a new Addison Recorder series highlighting Chicago storefront theatre – by Leigh Yenrick. Leigh is an actress who has worked in Toledo and the Twin Cities, and who currently resides in Chicago.

This week we are taking a look at Profiles season opener Reasons to Be Happy. Written by Neil LaBute, the show is a sequel to his 2008 play reasons to be pretty, bringing us back into the lives of Greg (Eric Burger), Steph (Domenica Cameron-Scorsese), Carly(Sarah Loveland), and Kent (Dennis Bistro). All of them are in their middle aged years and trying to find happiness, whether that would be with each other or in the form of inner peace. I recently got to talk about the play with Profiles’ own Artistic Director Darrell W. Cox who directed Reasons to Be Happy.